Family
by wingedraksha
Summary: He never thought he'd see Marion Ravenwood again. He never thought he'd have a son. Now that he's been proved wrong on both counts, Indiana Jones must face down the most personal demon of all: family.


He was angry. Or resentful. Or stubborn, jealous, confused, protective, all those hot inelegant furies that Jones himself knew so very well. And just like him, the boy wasn't coming outright with it. It was all in the walk, in the straight spine below the vicious hunch of the shoulders, in the downward curl of his mouth. It was all in the eyes, fiery man-child eyes that were as strange and as familiar as Indy's own.

Mutt hadn't said an unnecessary word during the decent. Not since the jibe about staying and leaving and that one hard sharp spit-spat word, that _Dad_. They'd gone down the temple in twos, the uneven steps trembling sometimes, crumbling others. Nothing but a "Watch that one" here and a "Keep steady" there, and now they were at the bottom trekking through the muggy jungle and Mutt wasn't breaking that silence.

Still, it wasn't until he felt the soft, miraculous pressure of Marion's hand on his back, just above the line of his right shoulder blade, that Indy thought about doing something. He could feel the warmth of her palm through the fabric of his shirt, could feel it like a brand. He'd always been able to feel her, so acutely, no matter the circumstances. It was like magnetism, between them. And now, her behind him, sweat wet and sticky on his face, the crunch of boots on earth and the absent-minded humming of Ox just ahead, he could _hear_ her as well. The things she wasn't saying. Not the way he could hear Mutt, that smolder and smoke; Marion was different. Marion was quieter, a steady stream of wordless emotion that made his heart ache.

"_Talk to him,"_ that hand was murmuring. _"Go on, you silly boy. Talk to your son."_

He tilted his head back towards her, mouth twisted in a grimace, and let the expression say the things his own hands were too clumsy to articulate. She pressed a little harder, her fingers sliding up to his neck, thumb circling the muscle there, her bright dark eyes narrowing, the brows going down in emphasis. Indy sighed. He knew an order when he felt one, and he knew how much pain that slender hand could inflict if she chose to squeeze the muscle between his neck and his shoulder just a little bit harder.

"All right, all right," he said aloud, shrugging Marion's hand away and fingering his belt as he strode forward. He could hear her laughter, quiet and too knowing for her own good, as he shouldered neatly past Ox and made his way up towards where Mutt was swiping wildly at a mess of vines that half-covered the path. Indy caught the boy's arm midswing before he had a chance to think about it, and Mutt swung around with a startled glare.

"Cut at more of an angle," Jones told his son, letting go of his arm with a half-shrug that was almost sheepish. "It'll slice 'em easier."

"Sure, daddy-o, whatever you say," the young man threw him carelessly, and made to turn away.

"Look," Indy said, not really meaning to. He didn't have anything to say after that, so when Mutt turned around again and ducked through the half-cut vines, walking backwards, he just hitched in a breath and adjusted the whip at his hip.

"You got something to say?" Indy ducked through the hanging vines and brought his hat down a little more firmly on his head, frowning.

"Do you?" Come to think of it, that did seem like the thing to say. Or, at least, the boy seemed to think so, because he let out a harsh half-laugh and threw his hands up in the way a man does when he's asking for a fight.

"Yeah, you know, maybe I do!" Jones kept moving, Mutt kept moving, a sort of sliding play.

"Let's hear it, then." Mutt laughed again, but it wasn't a funny kind of a laugh. His mouth was smiling, disbelieving, but the eyes were hard and hurt and didn't leave Indy's face.

"So, all right, yeah, you got all these things to do," Mutt started, and then spun around, his right hand carelessly spinning the switchblade. He took a few steps, stopped, spun again. "You leave us, you leave _her_, and you wait twenty goddamn years? Twenty-" He broke off, breathed in, kept going. "And you think what, you can just walk back in? Just 'cause, you think just 'cause she still loves you you can just play around in our lives again? Well-" The knife flipped, flipped. "Well, you can't!" Indy held up his hands.

"I don't expect anything from you, Mutt," he said, trying to reign in the immediate urge to snap at the boy. Mutt did not look impressed. He shook his head, sending droplets of blood from the cut that had reopened above his eye across his cheek.

"But you expect something from her."

"I'm not going to hurt your mother again," Indy told him, and realized as soon as the words were out that they were as true as he could make them. "You have my word on that."

"Yeah, your word. That really means a lot, Pops." The sneer in those words pushed the wrong button somewhere back in Jones' head, and he narrowed his eyes.

"Now, hang on just a minute, son, you-"

"Don't call me that! You're not my father, you're just the guy my mother slept with. The guy who didn't even love her enough to-"

"I loved her," Indy interrupted, voice harsher than he'd expected. The sound of it tore him, tore Mutt too, because the boy stopped. Indy paused, braced himself, kept going. "I loved her," he said again. "I loved your mother more than I have ever loved any woman, more than I will ever love any woman again, and I still do. And if you think I'm going to let her go twice you're not as smart as I thought."

There was a long silence. Behind them, Ox had given up humming in favor of whistling. Mutt was staring at him, something strange and unnamed in his eyes, lips parted with the force of that speech.

"And I _will_ call you son," Indy added, lowering his chin, meeting Mutt's gaze as steadily as he'd ever met anything. "And be proud of it, too."

And then Mutt did an unbelievable thing.

He blushed.

"Yeah, well," he said, turning fast and flipping the knife all over again. "'M not going back to school, no matter _what_ you say."

And they ducked past an overgrown, fallen tree, and somehow when they got by that, Indiana Jones and Henry Jones III were walking side by side.


End file.
